I'm using a different approach for local testing where I don't want to redownload images over and over: https://github.com/stackabletech/k8s-local-dev

Basically it's a k3s configured to use a local mirror and that local mirror is running the Zot registry (https://zotregistry.dev/v2.1.8/). It is configured to automatically expired old images so my local hard drive isn't filled up).